It Seems To Be The Time For Fitch To Get Tough

INSIDE THE NBA

December 3, 1989|By Barry Cooper of The Sentinel Staff

When the New Jersey Nets dumped Coach Willis Reed by ''promoting'' him to vice president last summer, they took a get-tough approach by hiring venerable Bill Fitch as his replacement. The Nets were in need of resuscitation, and they still are.

There are reports that the Nets' players remain as irresponsible under Fitch as they were during Reed's aborted, 1 1/2-year stint.

Reporters traveling with the team say that when the Nets arrived in Los Angeles recently to play the Clippers, many players were in such a hurry to leave the hotel and go shopping that they neglected to stop by an assistant coach's room and pick up scouting reports that had been prepared for them. There also are reports that on one road trip, several of the players got into an argument over who sits in first class.

Said Nets guard Dennis Hopson: ''It is sad. We are not together as a team. We are just 12 individuals out there playing. I don't care if the guys like it those comments or not.''

Veteran center Joe Barry Carroll had a response for Hopson: ''It is an unfortunate comment,'' he said. ''But I don't think, at least I hope not, that guys are looking out for themselves. If so, then I think we may have a real problem, but I don't think so. I disagree with Hop.''

Fitch, former coach at Boston, Houston and Cleveland, has a reputation for being tough on players. The time may have come for him to exert all the nastiness he can.

When Atlanta Hawks center Moses Malone arrived at The Palace arena outside Detroit for a recent game with the Pistons, he discovered that he had left his sneakers at the hotel. Malone likes low-top sneakers, but all the Hawks could find in his size were high tops. So the Hawks' trainer took a razor and shaved off the top half of the shoe. Malone still wasn't satisfied. He paid a ballboy $10 to drive back to the team hotel and retrieve his shoes. Apparently, the Pistons got wind of the ballboy's mission and one of the Pistons' players - the Hawks suspect Scott Hastings - paid the ballboy $20 not to go get Malone's shoes. The game began and Malone, wearing his makeshift shoes, kept looking for the ballboy, who finally arrived with the shoes a few minutes into the first quarter.

Bill Musselman, intense coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, in a figurative sense lives and dies with every possession. Sometimes that much intensity gets to be too much even for him, which is why he left his team for a couple of days last week and flew to his home in Sarasota. The Timberwolves had a few open days before playing road games at Miami and Orlando, and Musselman said he just had to get off by himself. The Timberwolves had just been beaten by the Charlotte Hornets, and when Musselman walked into the Timberwolves' locker room, he spotted guard Adrian Branch laughing about something. Musselman's temper got the best of him. He picked up a chalkboard eraser and hurled it at Branch. ''I was frustrated when I walked into the locker room,'' Musselman said. ''He is laughing and I am dying inside. I don't want the guys to go, 'Oh well, we lost another one.' ''

The Miami Heat are saying that if center Rony Seikaly continues to improve he could become one of the top five rebounders in the league. . . . The Boston Celtics say they have looked into the possibility of buying out the European contract of guard Brian Shaw, but General Manager Jan Volk said, ''From what I have heard from several sources, that is not a realistic avenue at this point.'' The Cleveland Cavaliers say they aren't going to try to entice Danny Ferry, for whom they recently traded, to get out of his contract in Europe. Said Cleveland GM Wayne Embry: ''We respect the fact that he wants to honor his contract over there.'' There are rumors that Ferry has a loophole in his contract that would allow him to break the deal and join the Cavaliers immediately. But it appears that Ferry will wait until next season.

Dallas Mavericks owner Don Carter is tired of dealing with the alcohol and drug abuse problems of talented young center Roy Tarpley, but the feeling of many insiders around the league is that Dallas will be forced to keep him unless it can work a trade, which is unlikely. Tarpley simply is too good to cast away. Said one GM: ''What he is is another Akeem Olajuwon and Dallas just can't tell him to go away.'' Tarpley is almost impossible to trade because he has only one strike left under the NBA's drug treatment plan. One more drug-related offense and he'll be banned for life from the NBA with reinstatement possible after two years.